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07 March 2011

Evidence Gets Explained

Departing from my usual posts of scratching my genealogy/family history navel, I am celebrating the advent of Elizabeth Shown Mills to my town. Said town being TORONTO.

Not that—her life so often being peripatetic for speaking engagements—she is likely to see anything of my town beyond a few gazes out of hotel windows. Hotel windows are situated in the northern reaches of North York which grieves me as unrepresentative of downtown where I live. (Don’t get me wrong, the wonderful North York Central Library with its Canadiana Department is our enthusiastic and much-appreciated co-sponsor!).

That’s the life of a wildly in-demand speaker who must be booked years in advance. One hotel is much the same as another. But one audience always differs from another. This is a rare Canadian appearance for the acknowledged standard-bearer in genealogical education. The prestigious positions she has held and the honours bestowed her by major societies attest to accolades such as "the person with the greatest impact on genealogy in the post-Roots era," and “SuperGenie.”

“Advanced Genealogical Skills: A Seminar with Elizabeth Shown Mills.” Saturday April 2nd is the day and the auditorium of the North York Central Library (NYCL) on Yonge Street, Toronto, is the place 9 am to 5 pm. Details and registration at http://ocapg.org/shown_mills.html.

My group, the Ontario Chapter Association of Professional Genealogists (OCAPG), and the Canadiana Department of NYCL are co-sponsoring this event. The Canadiana Department is the home for published/manuscript collections of the Ontario Genealogical Society, Société franco-ontarienne d’histoire et de généalogie, The Jewish Genealogical Society of Canada (Toronto), and much more.

NYCL is minutes off Highway 401 in Toronto and there’s a Novotel mere steps away within the North York Centre where the Library is located.

Elizabeth will be speaking on problem-solving techniques, the harder-to-identify females in our lines, and the process of analysis and planning for the toughest research cases. Of course, there will also be a session devoted to demystifying source citations!

Ms Mills’ lecture handouts alone are worth the price of admission. They are not available to non-attendants. Trust me. The whole package of presentations is a bargain. It has been a few years since I was a trustee along with Elizabeth on the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Thus I disclose a personal interest in bringing her expertise to dedicated family historians in this region. And dear readers, should you show up as a result of this blog post, I will wrack my brain for a fitting prize.

Asking because (is this getting complicated?) you said "when MY society ..." and "... like YOURS" [emphasis added] and I am saying my society that's making the ESM event happen is the Ontario Chapter APG. Probably implying that you and your chapter too can have ESM for a whole day in about 2015 if you start now *insert giggle*. We had this surplus $ and did not pass Go and went right to Park Place, eh?

Zoom! Whoosh! I made that way more difficult that it needed to be LOL.

The Gen Soc I belong to (My Society)would never have the kind of money it would take to have ESM even think about coming to Stockton.

The Northern Cal APG Chapter - well we are just a bunch of renegades. There are about 15 to 20 APG members who happen to live in Northern California and every 3 months we go on the best field trips and have lunch. No dues, no formal meetings, no executive board, no body is the boss of us LOL! That's the way we roll in California.

Sigh. So take pictures for me and have a wonderful and educational time. Sigh.